


We're Revolutionaries Now

by AxolotlQueen



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/F, Female Hermann Gottlieb, Female Newton Geiszler, Female Newton Geiszler/Female Hermann Gottlieb, Fluff, Kissing, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1645169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxolotlQueen/pseuds/AxolotlQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One really shouldn't attempt to cut one's own hair. </p><p>(Or, Hermione Gottlieb gives herself a bad haircut and Newton Geiszler helps out.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Revolutionaries Now

**Author's Note:**

> So, fem Newt is still named Newt. I mean, I figure if you're the sort of person that names your kid Newt you probably aren't going to stop and go, but that isn't usually a girl's name!
> 
> Fem Hermann is Hermione.
> 
> Other than the genders and the names, everything is pretty much the same. It's set in the canon verse. 
> 
> basically this fic stemmed out of me thinking how being female would and would not change them, and also, loving girls with short hair.

Newt is completely asleep when the knocking starts.

Okay, so that's a lie. She isn't asleep. She _is_ in bed in her pajamas (which are totally just a t-shirt and underwear because she’s alone anyway), but instead of sleeping she is maybe, okay yes definitely, reading Godzilla fanfiction. But one, there’s no way in hell she’s admitting that to anyone - there’s not being embarrassed about your life and then there’s “yeah I read about Godzilla and Mecha-Godzilla banging in my spare time to unwind" - and two, she can now hear Herms’s voice shrilly shouting “ _Newton_!” and if she goes to the door and acts like she was asleep, Herms will be guilty and Newt is all about teasing her in every single way possible.

So she shuts down her laptop, fluffs up her hair some more so it looks even more like bedhead, and strolls over to the door, opening it up while blinking repeatedly and artfully yawning. 

Hermione still has one hand raised to knock again. She’s wearing her ridiculous, god-awful parka for some reason, unzipped but with the hood up. She doesn’t even notice Newt yawning. “I need your help,” she blurts, brown eyes wide with panic. 

“What’s up?” Newt asks with a frown. Hermione looks genuinely upset, not like Newton-you-drew-on-my-chalkboard- _again_ -I-have-asked-you- _not_ -to-do-that- _so-many-times_ upset, but like…

“I did something really stupid and I need your help.”

 _That_ sort of upset.

Newt opens the door the rest of the way and shoos her into the room. She’s still fully dressed, for some reason, even though Newt is pretty sure she’s usually asleep by this time of day. Newt shuts the door once she’s in all the way. “What’s wrong, Herms? What did you do?”

She hesitates, and looks Newt over once, seeming only now to notice that she is in sleeping clothes. “It’s really stupid. And awful.”

“Just tell me.”

“I wouldn’t mind it so much myself but it’s going to look really bad.” 

“Herms, did you like, kill someone or something? Oh shit, did someone touch your chalkboard again? Look, I’ll totally help you hide the body but you have to give me details for me to help-“

She waves a hand impatiently in the air. “Of course I didn’t kill someone! Idiot! It’s nothing like that!”

Newt huffs and sits down on the foot of the bed. “Well, what is it then!” 

She does that thing where she flattens her mouth into a thin, folded line. “You have to promise not to laugh.” 

Newt kind of wants to laugh just at that. What is she, twelve? But she says solemnly, “I promise.”

“Really, Newton, don’t laugh at me.”

“I won’t laugh, Herms. C’mon. Don’t you trust me?”

Hermione turns her head to the side, then sighs. “All right,” she murmurs, and lifts one pale hand to her head, catching onto the furry edge of her parka. With a last reluctant glance at Newt, she draws it back. 

“OH. MY. GOD!” Newt says, then dissolves into laughter. 

“Don’t laugh!” Hermione shrieks, turning crimson. 

“What did you do to your _hair_?”

Her hair. Her hair, which is almost always pulled back into a simple bun at the back of her skull, perfectly neat at the start of the day, falling apart by the end of it. There’s always long, straight wisps pulling out to cloud around the sharp angles of her face. Often, chalk is smeared across where it pulls tight to her head, because she often puts a hand up to smooth her hair down. Newt has joked sometimes that the reason her pale skin looks as if it’s drawn taut across her bones is because her bun is so damn tight. Once or twice, in moments of great stress, like that time she fell off her ladder (and actually scared the living fuck out of Newt) the bun has fallen apart entirely so that straight brown hair falls down past her shoulders. Before seeing it, Newt had thought undoing her hair might make her look loosened up but instead it just obscured the severe beauty of her bone structure and turned her into an awkward woman in awful, dowdy clothes instead of someone nerdy but sorta pretty in a hidden way. Not that there’s anything wrong with not being pretty, but it bothers Newt sometimes that so few people seem to see Hermione in the way that Newt sees her, and having her hair down just made that worse. Newt had wanted to sweep the hair out of her face and hold it back there by her ears, thumbs tracing across cheekbones, and lean in closer and…and that’s where she put the brakes on because obviously thinking those sorts of thoughts about Hermione Gottlieb is a Not Good Idea that will lead to Nowhere Good. 

But now, the bun is gone, and so is the long, beautiful hair that had not been beautiful on her. Instead there is a short, choppy mess, brown strands of varying lengths, but almost none exceeding four or five inches, sticking up from her head. There is still one long piece hanging by the edge of her face, and there’s the most awful cow lick standing up at the back above it all, but for the most part it is all viciously short.

It looks completely fucking ridiculous. 

“I cut it!” she shouts, words getting higher as she goes, so that she sounds slightly hysterical. “Stop _laughing_!” 

Newt forces herself to take a deep breath and sit up straight. “Herms,” she says seriously, then looks at the cowlick again. It’s bouncing slightly as Herms moves. “I fucking can’t,” she says and falls back on the bed laughing.

“Newton!” 

“Okay, okay, I’m stopping this time, I swear,” Newt gasps, wiping at her eyes. “Oh man, fucking Christ.” She sits up again, bracing herself for the sight of the cowlick. It’s not nearly as funny this time, because Hermione has a humiliated red flush on her cheeks and is biting her lips and looks as if she is possibly considering crying. Which is impossible of course, because she is the last person on this kaiju infested planet to ever consider crying (other than perhaps Stacker Pentecost), but still serves to sober Newt up considerably. “Why the fuck would you cut your hair?”

“I, I-“ she stammers, then scowls furiously, draws herself up straight, and points furiously at Newt. “This is all _your_ fault!” 

“My fault?” Newt echoes. “How the fuck is this my fault!”

“You, you’re always sashaying around the lab-“

“Excuse me, I do not sashay, when have I ever in my life sashayed-“

“With your conveniently short hair, going on about how convenient it is-“

“I do not go on!”

“Never having to brush it out of your eyes when reading or having to tie it back or worry it’s falling down or if the bobby pins have fallen out-“

“They always fall out, Herms, I’ve told you to just use hairspray-“

“I hate hairspray!” she declares passionately. “I hate how it smells, and it’s sticky, and it’s hard to wash it out, and it’s not that easy to find these days! And I hate bobby pins, and I hate hair ties, and I hate tying it up, and I hate it falling down, and I hate brushing it, and I hate having it be so tight that I get headaches, and having to wake up early to do it up, and wash it all the time, and do a hundred hair strokes, and looking unprofessional if it falls out and looking unprofessional if it isn’t up and men thinking it’s an invitation to flirt with me when it’s down and telling me it would look better down, and I hate it! And I never knew how much I hated it until I noticed how nice and easy and cute your hair is!” 

Newt swallows. “Cute?”

Hermione doesn’t seem to hear her. She’s still ranting. “So today I, I decided I was done with it being long, so I cut it all off, but it, it looks completely ridiculous! Utterly unprofessional! I have to present to the Marshal tomorrow on my latest findings, Newton, I cannot present looking like this! What do I _do_?”

“Oh, that’s right, we do have a meeting tomorrow,” Newt says with a wince. “Huh.”

“I’m going to look like a complete fool!” Hermione wails, raking a hand over the ruins of her hair, which only serves to make it stand up more. The cowlick lies flat for an instant and then bounces up again, as if she were the protagonist of some silly anime. 

“Okay, okay, calm down, Herms, we are genius scientists, we can figure this out,” Newt says, standing up. Hermione is still standing just inside the door, and Newt advances the few steps towards her. “Put your hand down, lemme look at it.” 

She takes a deep breath, exhales once, then sniffs and drops her hand. Newt takes one step closer so she’s crowding into her personal space. It is possibly the closest she has ever physically been to her in the year or so of their acquaintance, or, well, the sixish years of their acquaintance, if you count the emails and the period of radio silence, which Newt usually tries not to. This close, she can smell the faint, dry scent of chalk, and something else mildly floral, shampoo probably, and could count each long eyelash. Newt bites the inside of her mouth and instead focuses on the top of her head, reaching up to gently brush her fingers through the short, surprisingly soft strands. She has to go on tiptoes to do so. Damn the height difference. 

“N-newt-“ Hermione says with a short little breath. Her eyes are opened very wide. They flicker down for a second and then back up. “What are you doing-“

“I think I can salvage it,” Newt says. 

“What?”

Newt drops her hands and takes a step back. “I took some classes on hair cutting when I was younger for the hell of it. I can probably even it out, make it less crazy, but…I, uh, I dunno how cute I can make it-“

“I don’t care about _that_ ,” Hermione says contemptuously. “When have I ever cared about appearances?”

Newt looks her over. She has, as always, the bare minimum of make-up. Underneath her parka, she’s wearing a neat, dark colored sweater. Button up blouse beneath that. The woman likes her layers. Knee-length, plaid skirt. Black tights. Flat, close-toed shoes. Even her cane is shiny, smooth wood with a polished metal handle. All of it screams academic, professional, respectable, don’t-touch-me, don’t-think-of-me-as-anything-other-than-a- _scientist_. 

“You do so care. You act like you don’t, but you totally do.”

She flushes again. “Oh, and you don’t?”

“At least I’m honest about it!”

“Just because I don’t run around in only pink lace panties doesn’t mean that I’m dishonest about it!” she snaps. 

Newt is suddenly one hundred percent aware of the fact that she is in indeed still wearing only a ragged t-shirt from her band days, and pink lacy panties. Not like, nice pink, lacy panties. Like, boy shorts, that cover her whole ass and go up to her hips and have little strips of lace running down on the middle of each leg so that you can pretend that you are wearing nice underwear even though you aren’t really. And below that is nothing, just her legs, and ugh, even though in general she thinks she has nice legs, they are a bit short and she’s always been a little iffy on her thighs, and she hasn’t shaved in like a week so there’s definitely some leg hair going, and anyway she is just super aware that her legs could probably never compare to the long, glorious, pale legs that are surely hidden under Hermione’s damn tights. 

But Hermione was looking at her pink lacy panties. 

Newt jerks her gaze back up to Hermione, who has gone even redder and is now defiantly staring up and to the side and tugging on the long chunk hanging next to her face. “A-anyway, I don’t care about looking ‘cute’ or anything stupid like that, I just don’t want to look like a punk, lesbian dropout! I want to be able to look the Marshal in the face tomorrow and be taken seriously!” 

“Okay, I object to that generalization, but that is totally the haircut I had when I was going through my punk stage,” Newt remarks. And she definitely thought she was a lesbian back then. Like, if you’re a girl and you wanna kiss other girls, that makes you a lesbian, right? Turns out not, but that was a bit complex for Newt at age fifteen. “And…I think I can do that. It might still be quote-on-quote ‘butch,’ but it’ll be professional. And short. That’s okay, right?”

“I’m fine with anything short of a buzz cut,” Hermione assures her. “Even a buzz cut might be okay if there was still some on top, what are those called…”

“An undercut?” Newt says, and grimaces. “I dunno about that, Herms, I think you’d look military and awkward and possibly like you had a bowl cut.”

“We _are_ military,” she snaps with unexpected ferocity.

“No, no, no no no. Not military. We are scientists who work for a, um, sorta kinda but not totally military organization. But _we_ are not military. Besides, PPDC isn't even official anymore, we're rebels now, I don’t think that counts-” 

“Fine, fine, just cut my damn hair already!” 

Getting into a position in which Newt can actually cut her hair turns into a bit of a struggle. As semi-important people in a not-that-crowded Shatterdome, they both have rooms that come attached with bathrooms, but the bathrooms are tiny. Newt _has_ fit two people in there for an extended period before, but that was under much more intimate circumstances. So they decide to do the actual cutting out in the main bedroom part and lay an old sheet that Newt doesn’t really use anymore down. Then there’s the issue that although Herms could stay standing that long, it’s probably an unnecessary, unwanted strain, and anyway if she’s standing then Newt has to be on tiptoe just to reach her head, and that’s really not a good position for cutting hair. There is a chair in Newt’s room, for the tiny desk, but it’s one that has wheels on the bottom, so at first she keeps slowly rolling away every time Newt nudges the chair, and Newt has to keep dragging her back, and several times has to stop cutting her hair because the sight of Hermione sitting upright in that chair with her hands folded primly in her lap and an anxious frown on her face as she very slowly rolls away is completely hilarious (and also weirdly adorable) and it’s probably best not to hold sharp scissors near someone’s head while giggling madly. 

But they figure it out in the end. They put some wedges of paper under the chair wheels to hold it in place - “These aren’t _important_ papers, are they, Newton?” - and Newt manages to stop laughing when Hermione says in a genuinely distressed voice, “This is an important presentation, Newton, I can’t have people not listening to it just because I look like an idiot!” 

“You don’t look like an idiot,” Newt assures her - she could never look like an idiot - and settles down to being more serious about it. 

After a few minutes of silence other than the sound of Newt hmming and clipping away at her hair, Newt says, “But really, why did you do it?”

Hermann hmphs and puts her chin up, which means she is about to be not entirely truthful. “I told you, I hate having long hair. It’s so much unnecessary bother.”

“So why’d you even have long hair in the first place?” Newt asks, walking around Hermione to stand in front of her. She carefully takes the long strand and threads it through her fingers, measuring against the strands next to it where to cut. “Don’t look down. Or up. Stop moving your head, keep it level to the ground.”

Hermione jerks her head up to the position Newt instructed. Newt regrets telling her to do that, because it puts her face fairly level with the pink panties. She turns red again and shuts her eyes. “Girls are supposed to have long hair.”

“Oh, c’mon, Herms, don’t tell me you buy into that stupid shit.”

“Of course not, I think it’s stupid. But…you don’t get it, Newton. You’re different from me.”

“In what way?”

“You don’t care what people think about you.”

Newt has to laugh again. “Dude, have you met me? I _so_ care. What, you think I wanted to be a rock star because I’m just so gosh darn earnest about music?”

“But…it’s in a different way. You, you don’t care if people think that you’re a little ridiculous, or if they don’t respect you. If people tell you that you can’t do something, you do it anyway. I’m not like that.”

“I don’t see how hair plays into that.”

“Because I have to play along to their stupid little games!” she says sharply. “The position I’m in- You know it’s not easy! Being a woman in the sciences. You can just say fuck it to that because you’re going to be weird anyway, so it hardly even matters, and you’re brilliant enough on your own to make up for it! But it’s worse for me, because I’m Lars Gottlieb’s daughter - and of course he cares about things like that - and I have this stupid fucking limp, so no matter what I do or how well I do it, people always say, ‘she only made it here because of that. Her father pulled strings. They felt _bad_ for her.’ And if I just ignored that it reflected poorly on my father and made it look like what people were saying was true! So I have to play along and prove that that’s it’s not and that I am completely professional in every single way and deserve respect for myself. And I don’t just have to be a good scientist and a professional, but I also have to be a woman. If I have short hair, or long hair that isn’t worn up; if I wear short skirts, or god forbid, _pants_ ; if I wear lots of make-up, if I look pretty, or if I don’t wear make-up, or if I don’t look pretty enough, then obviously I’m not serious about what I do. Because of course if I was I would dress in a certain, specific way that someone has decided is acceptable for my gender, never mind that half the male idiots that I’m smarter than can barely dress themselves! No, I have to be brilliant _and_ professional _and_ never let anyone forget I’m female but _also_ not be sexual in anyway, not if I want to be taken seriously. And I, I care about that! I want to be taken seriously! I’m sure it seems ridiculous to you but it matters to me! I _deserve_ respect. My work is serious, and I care about it, and I don’t want people to say that it isn’t or that I only made it into the PPDC because my father is influential!” 

Newt doesn’t move for most of this speech. Hermione falls silent, breathing roughly, hands clenched into fists in her skirts so that they draw above her knees. The snip when Newt cuts off the long strand next to her face is very audible in the room.

“So that’s why you cut it,” Newt murmurs. “We’re just the revolution now. No one can say you’re here due to Lars, and the Marshal will respect you even if you do look stupid, because he isn’t a sexist piece of shit. So you could finally have short hair.” 

Her skirt makes a soft rustling sound as it slips back over her knees. “I know it’s stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid. I totally get it. I mean, hell, Herms, half the reason I cut my hair short in the first place was to spite some sexist assholes at MIT. My lab partner kept snarkily reminding me to tie my hair up so that I didn’t light it on fire or something so one day I came in with it all chopped off. Then I lit his lab report on fire. Accidentally, of course. Also because I was being punk and rebellious, that’s the other reason I cut it, which is like, same difference. I just decided after a while that it was easier that way, that’s why I’ve got the pixie still.” 

She sighs. “Thank you, Newton.”

“No prob. And…I think it’s done.” She steps back, squinting at it critically. It all looks even.

“Oh, really?” Hermione says, voice going ever so slightly cracked the way it does when she’s nervous. 

Newt runs her hands over it one last time and nods to herself. “Yeah, I think so. Wanna check it out? Mirror’s in the bathroom, obviously.”

She nods, a short jerky movement and starts to lever herself out of the chair. Newt holds out a hand without thinking. Before she can wince and withdraw it - the first time she held out a hand to help Hermione out she got ranted at for at least half an hour - Hermione tentatively reaches out and takes it. Then there’s a stupid second where Newt is so startled by this that she just stares at their linked hands before she remembers to pull. 

They both drop hands the instant Hermione is on her feet.

The bathroom is still not really big enough for both of them, but Newt crowds in after Hermione anyway. She wants to style it a bit with a mirror there, and more importantly, she wants to see Hermione’s reaction.

“Oh,” she breathes, staring at herself in the mirror. The harsh white lighting casts her face into sharp relief. “It’s so short.”

It is so short, the dark brown strands lying flat against her skull. Newt parted it on the left, so she looks almost like a really high class business person or something like that. Someone fashionable but also very serious. And like that, with it so short and simple, the eye is automatically drawn to other features, to her big, brown eyes and long eyelashes that are dark without mascara, her model worthy cheekbones, her snow pale, smooth skin. The laugh lines that Newt never noticed before at the corner of her eyes. She hardly every smiles but when she does it’s impossible to look away.

“You look really…” Newt wants to say beautiful. But she can’t say that, not after everything Hermione just told her. Or, you know, at all, because this is Hermione, her strict, uptight lab partner that thinks she’s an idiot. “Really sharp. Professional as heck. Someone would have to be a fuckin’ idiot to not listen to every pretentious word out of your mouth and respect the hell out of you.” 

Hermione turns away from the mirror, toward Newt instead. “It looks wonderful,” she says softly. “Thank you.” 

Newt licks her lips nervously. “Ah, um, yeah- Oh. One sec. That cowlick keeps popping up, let me smooth it down-“ and she reaches out to it, and she has to take a step closer, and go on her tiptoes again, and without thinking she puts one hand on Hermione’s shoulder to balance herself, and the other carefully strokes over the cowlick and then keeps going down over the silky hair to stop at the back of her neck, and then she really doesn’t mean for it to happen but they are kissing. 

It’s just a brief electric brush of lips against lips, then they part. Hermione takes a step back. “I’m so sorry,” she stammers, hands coming up. “I, I didn’t mean to do that, that was out of line, I’m sorry-“

“What?” Newt says blankly. “You’re sorry- I kissed you! I’m sorry!”

“I definitely kissed you!” Hermione says. “I’m entirely sure of that!” 

“No way, it was me, I’m positive, I’ve been thinking of kissing you forever so it was definitely me-“ 

Hermione surges forward and kisses her again. Newt puts her hands around her tiny waist so that she can’t step back this time. “I kissed you that time,” Hermione says breathlessly. “And the first time! Because I’ve been thinking of kissing you for- for longer than forever!” 

“Your hair makes you look really cute,” Newt says, and kisses her again, fierce and short. “And you should wear short skirts if you want, you’d look amazing in short skirts, but you don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”

Another kiss. “You’re still not wearing pants and I can’t stop looking,” Hermione snaps, “And maybe I’ll wear them sometimes. Or just parade around in my underwear like you.

“This would be very unprofessional. This is all very unprofessional of you, Doctor Gottlieb,” Newt says against her mouth.

“Didn’t you hear, Doctor Geiszler? We’re revolutionaries now,” Hermione whispers. “Fuck being professional. I’m going to wear my hair short and wear pants and save the world and date my work colleague.”

“That’s me, right?”

“Yes, idiot.”

“Oh good, I was hoping it was.”


End file.
